Epic Rift Long Weekend

I started my journey on Thursday afternoon, as Friday was a day off for my particular foreigner homestead.  I loaded up with Iron Pine Melange, some Grave Maker Steaks, a few different sets of armor, and changed specs. I chose the one that gave me a pet… he’s still pretty low level, but he’s good for distracting squirrels, and gives me a bonus to cuteness (but only when he is out). My goal was an epic adventure to last the weekend. I started out heading for the Porticulum but found that it was inactive.  I then had to load up my mechanical horse.  I have one of those faction ones with four wheels and a trunk for my junk.

I navigated past many of the main roads to my destination. Unfortunately, based on my time of departure, there was a great bit of lag due to being on a high population server. It seemed that a lot of other folks had the same idea and there was a bit of a clog of other mechanical beasts. At times, I considered flagging PvP, but was afraid that the Guardian’s would gang up on me and prevent me from exiting off of the right side road.

Finally, I made it to my destination and was able to pick up an awesome quest that I hadn’t seen before.  I completed one of the easy ones (Rite of Unpacking) and talked to one of the NPCs named Mom (got to love those creative folks at Trion) who rewarded me with a big notoriety boost, and a few consumables.

Friday was a bit of a grind.  I worked on my foraging skills and was able to max out the skill by picking those rare Berries of Straw.  I ended up killing quite a few Endless Blades of Grass which gave me a pretty good boost to my Order of Malthos faction. As it turns out, the NPC Mom was a huge quest hub, and kept giving me follow-on quests that got more and more difficult as the day wore on.

Saturday was epic. I was able to take down the last boss in a Life Rift: Tree Man.  I was very impressed that I was able to solo it… I used a green Axe of Chopping.  More amazingly, I was dressed in cloth armor and was still able to get him down with burning only a few Soul Walks. The consumable Le Mona De helped keep my power up, and gave a good boost to my endurance.  I highly recommend it for soloing in the summer. The drop wasn’t as uber as I hoped: some wood coins, but it did give me another decent notoriety boost with the local inhabitants. I also got a few vials of nifty, dirt colored dye which I immediately put on my tunic and pants.  Matching armor FTW!

Saturday night, I was true to the Blog, and was able to GTFOOTF effectively, despite the massive aoe pool that dropped from the fire pit. The ranged Squirter helped. Nice to be able to used decent ranged as a Melee.

Having blown my Soul Recall, I needed to ride the mechanical horse on the way home. Luckily, I picked a quieter time for the server and didn’t experience any server maintenance. With all my adventures, I got about two levels of experience, and was able to max out my rested exp bonus once again.